Goodies Announcement

The new Beyond HTML Goodies book
is now available!

Go beyond the basics
and learn how the pros add and use dynamic HTML features and advanced
JavaScript techniques. Beyond HTML Goodies demonstrates dozens of new and
different features readers can add to their existing Web pages using HTML and
JavaScript. The book starts with simple text and image tips, such as adding a
clock to a Web page or causing text to appear when the mouse moves over an
image. It gradually builds to more complex tricks, including manipulating forms
or working with cookies behind the scenes. Throughout the book, readers enjoy
Joe's snappy style and "to the point" discussion of each "goody" in the book.

"If you build it, they will come." That may or may not apply to
playing fields, but it probably doesn't apply to much to websites! If you have
built a website the requires a lot of visitors in order to consider itself to be
a success, then you know that putting the site onto a server and making it
available to the Internet at large is only the first step. If the journey is
going to take you anywhere, there will need to be a lot more steps. The big
question is: in which direction should you take them?

There are some websites for which traffic is not an important consideration.
Family sites are a good example. A family website is intended to entertain
family members and friends. These people will be given the URL of the site
directly and can either remember it or add it to their favorites or bookmarks.
There is not much point in attempting to be listed with top rankings in a search
engine if this is the type of site. People don't usually use a search engine in
the hopes of finding some stranger's family site -- though I'm sure there are
circumstances in which this would occur!

If your website's intention is to sell something, or to refer people to a site
that sells something so that you can collect a commission or referral bonus,
then doctor's orders call for the largest number of visitors you can get. The
larger the number of people visiting your site, the higher that chance of
getting bites. The more frequently your site is found in the search engines, the
more frequently it will be chosen for a visit. The higher it is in the search
engine rankings, the more frequently it will be seen. It's simple logic! If this
is your site, you need it to be as high in the rankings as you can get, and in
the most popular search engines.

So which ones are the most popular? And how do you get to the top in them? Great
questions! And the answer is -- not at all simple! To answer these questions
requires looking at such matters as search engine optimization (SEO), meta tags,
placement, submission, marketing issues, popular queries, types of search
engines, rankings and such matters. Over the next few weeks I am going to take a
look at some of these subjects here in this news letter. (While there will be
several issues dedicated to this subject, there will be other subjects
interspersed - we try to please as many of our readers as we can!)

For any type of business that involves selling something to someone (which, if
you think about it, is just about every business except policing, fire-fighting
and government -- and even they.... <G>) the first thing you want to do is get
customers in through the door. If you have any notion of making money from a web
based business -- or making money by promoting someone else's web based business
-- then this series is for you! If you are the owner of a family website, this
series may be academic to you, but it might also inspire you to new ventures!

Q. I'm trying to make a website layout using JavaScript to create a design in
which the viewer can choose between a selection of image themes. Upon clicking
an image button on the page, the background and a header image will change
without the page reloading. Everything works great (preloading images, image
switches, background change) except that the design choice resets to the default
whenever you go to another page in the site. I can't think of any way to carry
the selection over to the next page.

Q. I want some JavaScript code to look at a directory and if it finds a
picture it displays it. So I can put pictures in the directory on the fly and
the code just goes and picks a JPG file to display randomly.

A. Unfortunately JavaScript does not have the ability to check if file is
present or not. You will need to use a Server Side language such as Perl or PHP
to perform that function.

Q. Is there anyway either in JavaScript or html or css to define a length
for a selection box?

A. CSS works best. If you want to assign the same properties to all
selects in a document then you can do the following:
select {color:blue;font-weight:bold;width:200;background-color:white;}
In the above example the width of the select is set at 200 pixels.
If you want different properties for each individual select then you would add a
class to the select tag like so:
<select class="selcss">
Then the CSS stuff would look like this:
.selcss {color:blue;font-weight:bold;width:200;background-color:white;}

.

Q. I am working with a button on my page:
<STYLE>
.start {font-size: 8pt; color:#ffff00; background:#cc3333}
.end {font-size: 8pt; color:#cc3333; background:#ffff00}
</STYLE>
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="javascript">
function highlightButton(s) {
if ("INPUT"==event.srcElement.tagName)
event.srcElement.className=s
}
</SCRIPT>
The above is placed above </head>
Then the <FORM></FORM> lines are placed where I need them to be below <BODY>
<FORM NAME=highlight onMouseover="highlightButton('start')" onMouseout="highlightButton('end')">
<INPUT TYPE="button" VALUE="Hot Computer Deals Of The Week!" onClick="location.href='http://www.tigerdirect.com/email/kb/promo.asp?ID=1671'">
</form>
I would like the button to start out as it appears for onMouseout="highlightButon('end')"
When the page loads, it is the standard grey default size button. Using
<STYLE></STYLE> I now have some control over the button size by specifying
font-size: 8pt; Of course, nothing happens until the cursor is passed over the
button.
I tried some [ onload= ] ideas that didn't work. Is there a way to control the
initial appearance of the button?

A. I added a class attribute to the INPUT tag. I just used one of the
classes you had already set in your styles, but you can create another one. The
javascript helps with the changes.
<form name="highlight" onmouseover="highlightButton('start')" onmouseout="highlightButton('end')">
<input class="end" type="button" value="Hot Computer Deals Of The Week!" onclick="location.href='http://www.tigerdirect.com/email/kb/promo.asp?ID=1671'"
/>
</form>
I'm not sure which version of HTML you are using... I'm used to writing in XHTML
1.0, so I've made the tags lowercase and added a / to the end of the INPUT.

Q. I currently have a couple of javascripts that are used throughout my
website. One for a date and another for rollovers. Can these two be placed onto
one external js page with a single link to it, or should each be on separate
pages with its own individual link?

A. Yes you can place both scripts in one ".js" file and point to it this
way:
<script src="myscript.js" language="JavaScript"></script>
One thing you will have to be careful of though is that if both scripts use
variable names that are the same one of them will have to be changed or you will
have a conflict. If you are already using them both on the same page then this
should not be a problem.

Q. I am creating a web site that has several secondary pages, and some of
those secondary pages have even further sub-categories. I would like to have
just one image folder for the entire site. Example: From home page I have a link
to "Authors" page. From that page, links to Twain, Longfellow, etc. The images
folder is on the same level as the Authors page. So on the Authors page the
image links look like this:
/img/pic.jpg
How do I get to the image folder from the Twain page?

A. The easiest way to do this is to use "../" for each level deep the
folder is. For instance: Start in your root folder where the "index" or home
page is. In that folder you also have an "images" folder and the "Twain" folder.
If you are referencing an image from the "index" page it would look mlike this:
img src="images/My_pic.jpg"
That tell the browser to look for the picture in the "images" folder.
Now reference the same picture from the "Twain" folder:
img src="../images/My_pic.jpg"
That tells the browser to look for the picture one level up in the "images"
folder.
Now let's get a little deeper. In the "Twain" folder you have another folder
named "Clemins". Let's reference the same picture from a page in that folder:
img src="../../images/My_Pic.jpg"
That tells the browser to look for the picture two levels up in the "images"
folder.

Every week a site is selected for review. Each week,
reviews of the previous week's selected site are chosen for
publication on the HTML Goodies website.

The current week's selected site is published in Goodies To
Go and in the Peer Reviews section of the website.
Current contact email addresses for submitting your site and
for submitting reviews are published in Goodies To Go.

If you would like to have your site reviewed, sign up for
the Goodies To Go newsletter in the Navigation Bar on the
left side of this page.

Did you ever wish your newsletter was an easy two way communications medium?
Ploof! It now is!
If you would like to comment on the newsletter or expand/improve on something
you have seen in here, you can now send your input to:

We already receive a lot of email every day. This address will help us sort out
those relating specifically to this newsletter from all the rest. When you send
email to this address it may wind up being included in this section of the
newsletter, to be shared with your fellow readers.
Please don't send your questions to this address.
They should be sent to our mentors: see
http://www.htmlgoodies.com/mentors/

For those who are missing Peer reviews: we are once again
revising the Peer review program in the hopes of creating a
workable solution. The current plan is to move the new Peer
Review pages into place in the new year. All those who have
been selected for reviews in the past will be featured in
the new pages. The new method will make it much easier for
your peers to provide feedback and much easier for us to
handle the publication side of things. "Watch this space!"
It's coming soon!!

ASP.NET's file system processing is much more advanced then
what was
available in classic ASP. Despite all the improvements
(including an easy
way to filter your results), for some reason, there's still
no built-in way
to sort the resulting file list. I guess it makes sense...
after all who
would ever want to list their files ordered by name, date,
size, or type...
that's just madness... or is it?

This article demonstrates how to create a reusable component
in ASP.NET 2.0
and then consume it from an ASP.NET page. Also learn how the
ObjectDataSource control can be used to directly bind the
output of an
object to the controls in an ASP.NET page and how
precompilation can be
used to increase the performance of the Web application and
catch
compilation errors.

A fifty-one day stand-off between the US Federal Government and a
heavily armed religious cult group culminated in a tear gas attack
and fire on this day in 1993. The cult, led by David Koresh (born
Vernon Wayne Howell in Houston, Texas,) had stockpiled arms and
explosives in "readiness for the apocalypse" which Koresh said was
imminent. The bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF)initiated
a raid on the compound at Waco, Texas, on February 28th, looking for
illegal firearms and explosives. As they approached, they were fired
upon, resulting in the deaths of four agents, with fifteen others
injured. The operation grew to include over a hundred agents. On
April 18th, 1993 Attorney General Janet Reno gave approval for a
tear gas raid. On the 19th at about 6:00 am the first of more than a
hundred tear gas canisters was launched into the buildings. None of
the cultists came out. Just after noon fires broke out in several
places. A few minutes later nine Davidians fled the spreading
flames. The ATF reported gunfire coming from the buildings, but it
stopped as the building became completely engulfed in flames. Koresh
and at least eighty of his followers, including twenty-two children
died in the flames. The FBI and the Justice Department said that
Koresh had ignited the fires, though in 1999 the admitted that they
used tear gas bombs that have been known to start fires because of
their incendiary properties.

And in 1995, a truck bomb exploded outside the Alfred P.
Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, collapsing the
north side of the building and killing 168 people, including 22
young children in the building's day car center.

Today was also the day that in: 1587 Sir Francis Drake sailed
into the harbor at Cadiz and sank the Spanish fleet; 1770
Captain James Cook first saw Australia; 1882 the father of
the theory of evolution and author of "Origin of the Species", Sir
Charles Darwin, died; 1909 Joan of Arc was declared a Saint;
1919 the French Assembly decided on an eight hour workday;
1956 US actress Grace Kelly married Prince Rainier of Monaco in
a civil ceremony; 1971 Sierra Leone became a Republic;
1971 Charles Manson was sentenced to life imprisonment for the
murder of Sharon Tate; 1982 NASA announced that Sally Ride
was the first female astronaut; 1994 Rodney King was awarded
$3,800,000 as compensation for a beating he took from the Los
Angeles police;

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